Publishing HistoryThis story was written by John Coleman Burroughs. It first appeared
as a Big Little Book story in 1940. The text followed in the
summary below was published in Amazing Stories Quarterly, Volume
1, no. 4 fall 1941. It was reprinted in Amazing Stories, January
1964. The first book edition of this tale was Canaveral Press,
Inc., July 24, 1964. The first paperback edition was by
Ballantine
Books, April 1965.

The story was written in 14 short chapters.

Chapter One: AbductionJohn Carter & Dejah Thoris ride a single thoat through the lonely
Helium Forest to inspect their kingdom. They are attacked by an arbok,
a tree reptile, and Dejah disappears. The thoat has been killed by a bullet
from an atom gun, so Carter runs home to find a ransom note. He is
to give up the iron works of Helium to Pew Mogel in three days or Dejah
will lose her fingers. Kantos Kan and Tars Tarkas make plans for Dejah's
rescue after quickly eliminating a spy who tries to kill Carter.
Tars will go east; Carter will go west with Kantos Kan waiting at Helium
with the entire air force on alert.

Chapter Two: The Search John Carter was the leader of 24 fast, one-man scouts that scattered
to cover all the territory in their district. At midnight Carter
receives a message from Kantos Kan that Tars Tarkas has found Dejah in
a deserted city on the banks of the Dead Sea at Korvas. Carter goes
there to meet Tars at the main bridge as instructed where he is attacked
by white apes. He escapes the apes but is picked up by a giant hand.

Chapter Three: Joog, the Giant Joog, a 130-foot tall giant, carries John Carter to a ruined
palace and puts him in a tower room. Carter hears a scream and wonders
if it could be Dejah Thoris. He tries to move to an adjoining tower
along a ledge while Joog sleeps at the foot of the tower, but the giant
awakens and throws him back through the open window. Carter escapes from
the room through a secret passage that takes him beneath the tower where
he finds a strangely preserved red warrior, who turns to dust when he strikes
his arm with his sword, and scores of beautiful women slaves similarly
preserved. Carter is attacked by gigantic, three-legged Martian rats who
stun him after a terrific half-hour battle and drag him down a tunnel.

Chapter Four: The City of RatsJohn Carter is dragged by the rats to a huge underground cavern where
the rats live in mud huts built on frameworks of human bones. He
is brought before the King of Rats where thousands of rats perform a weird
ring dance around mounds of human bones. Carter cuts the head off
the King Rat and leaps 50 feet in the air to a stalactite, then escapes
into a cave in the ceiling. Carter goes through a massive door into a gleaming
white laboratory. Glass cages are filled with white apes with their
heads swathed in bandages. A pit in the floor reveals red warriors
with the tops of their heads neatly sliced off.

Chapter Five: Chamber of HorrorsJohn Carter finds a book, "Pew Mogel, His Life and Wonderful Works,"
but before he can look into it, he is instructed by a voice over a loudspeaker
to go into a throne room where he meets a misshapen man, Pew Mogel.
Pew has been observing Carter's progress by means of a television screen.
Pew is a pupil and creation of Ras Thavas. He has a microcephalic
head and is crafty but quite mad. He has no eyelids, so he can not
blink. Pew Mogel shows Carter that Tars, Tarkas chained to a revolving
pillar. They have both been trapped by a message from Pew. Pew Mogel's
eye pops out, but he does not notice. He tells them he has created
Joog from the flesh of 10,000 red men and white apes. He replaces
his eye as he informs them he plans to transfer his brain into a more normal-looking
body.

Chapter Six: Pew MogelPew Mogel is one of Ras Thavas's synthetic men. He escaped from
Morbus to set up his own laboratory and has plans to rule all of Barsoom.
Pew has transferred the brains of red men criminals into the bodies of
white apes to that they might escape detection. Joog is nearly indestructible
because his tissues are rapidly self-repairing. He with the white
ape-men make up the conquering army of Pew Mogel. Pew Mogel shows Carter
Dejah Thoris chained to another revolving pillar. Her price of ransom
is the Helium iron works, which he wants to make more weapons of war. John
Carter leaps toward his mate, but is stopped by an invisible glass partition.
Dejah is "tortured" by being kissed by a white ape. Pew tried to squeeze
Carter between glass partitions, but he cuts his way out with his diamond
ring. Pew then calls for Gore, a white ape.

Chapter Seven: The Flying TerrorGore struggles with Carter but is kicked out a tower window to his
death. Pew orders Joog to pick up Carter, so he is drawn through
a window by a giant hand. He is taken to the arena and placed in
a cage over a pit filled with water, then Tars and Dejah are brought by
the giant and placed in similar cages on either side of him. Pew flies
into the arena on a malagor. (A malagor is a huge, extinct Barsoomian bird
recreated by Ras Thavas for his Hormads to ride in Synthetic Men
of Mars.) Thousands of white apes that fill the arena mount
malagors and circle above the caged trio. This is Pew's army.
They are armed with small canons and sub-machine guns. Pew tells
them they will soon be eaten by reptiles that swim in the pit below, then
his army flies off toward Helium with Joog in tow carried in a sling by
a hundred malagors.

Chapter Eight: The Reptile PitCarter learns from Tars that Pew has sent a false message to Kantos
Kan drawing the airfleet of Helium away to the Great Toonolian Marshes
a thousand miles away from the city. They are lowered into the water in
the pit by a white ape, who promptly falls asleep. John Carter swings
his cage back and forth until he can reach the sleeping guard and the key
to the cages. After a brief struggle with the reptiles, they all
escape. The undaunted trio fly on malagors to the City of Thark, inhabited
by a hundred thousand green warriors over whom Tars Tarkas ruled.
An army of green men mounted on thoats ride toward Helium at dawn of the
following day led by Tars Tarkas himself. John and Dejah ride above
them on a malagor.

Chapter Nine: Attack on HeliumPew attacks Helium with all of his forces. Kantos Kan has taken
the bait, so the fleet of Helium is gone, but a messenger has been sent
on a malagor to bring them back. White apes fly over the city on
their malagor dropping bombs on the nearly defenseless people. "Fifty
thousand years of Martian learning and culture wrecked by a power-mad maniac
-- himself the synthetic product of civilized man!" The next morning,
the green men lead a desperate charge upon the city to save what might
be left of it, when at the same moment the fleet of Helium appears.
The green men on thoats have to fight the flying white apes as the fleet
draws near, but just as it seems that they might be saved Joog appears
holding a huge tree trunk in his mighty hand. In a steel howdah strapped
to the top of Joog's helmet rides Pew Mogel. Twenty of Helium's
ships are downed by a single blow of the giant.

Chapter Ten: Two Thousand ParachutesThe fleet regroups and spreads out to fight the giant, but his rapidly
regenerating tissue is not affected by even thousands of bullet or ray
wounds. "It is probable that he will live and grow forever unless
something drastic is done to destroy him." Carter tells Tars to take
his men into the mountains, then he flies to Kantos Kan and orders the
fleet to retreat as well. Carter and Dejah have fought the entire
battle together on the back of the malagor, which they now release.
They need to re-form for a new attack. Carter orders up ten of the largest
planes, each loaded with ten men and 200 parachutes.

Chapter Eleven: A Daring PlanCarter is gone for 24 hours. When he gets back with the secretly
prepared ships, Joog is still busy throwing boulders into the city.
He tells Kantos Kan that when he sees the giant raise and lower his arms
three times it will be time to carry out his orders. Carter bids
a sad farewell to Dejah Thoris, then flies a speedy, one-man airship toward
the giant.

Chapter Twelve: The Fate Of A NationCarter flies his ship down upon Pew Mogel's glass howdah from straight
above and crashes through. Pew's left eye pops out, but he manages
to sword fight with Carter, but not until he is able to give the signal
to Kantos Kan. Looking out the window Pew gets a surprise.

Chapter Thirteen: PanicThe malagors panic when they see thousands of three-legged Martian
rats descending in thousands of parachutes. The rats are their hereditary
enemies. Tars attacks from the ground and the fleet of Helium commands
the air now that the malagors have fled. Pew commands Joog to "Kill!
Kill! Kill!" Carter cuts Pew's head off, but he still manages to
swing his sword wildly and the head rolls around the floor. He can't
be killed because he is a synthetic man. However, Pew's body walks
out the open door, and Carter throws the head after it. Joog fights on,
mowing down Carter's troops and planes. Finally, Carter gets the
microphone that controls Joog's actions and commands him to stop. The white
apes run for the mountains pursued by the green men and angry rats.
John tells Joog to lie down, and he steps from the howdah. Then he
tells Joog to "Go to Korvas." Joog snarls.

Chapter Fourteen: Adventure's EndFinally, Joog sighs and heads off for Korvas. Carter decides
to set him free because he does not want more killing. Carter and
his men got the rats into parachutes by knocking them out with smoke in
their tunnels. They kept them unconscious with smoke until they released
them in the air. There is a great feast in Helium for red men
and green men alike. Tardos Mors gives a speech of thanks, and John
Carter embraces Dejah Thoris under the moons of Mars.

The EndNkima's
EssayJack Carter and the Giant

Maybe I'm not enough of a purist, but I rather enjoyed John Carter
and the Giant of Mars. It may not have come from the pen
of the Master, but it is certainly a good story in ERB's Wonder Realm.
His son obviously knew what he was about in creating this clever, little
fairy tale.

I'm not about to question the existence of three-legged rats on Barsoom.
Maybe they are not exactly Ulsios, but they do give one pause as to their
exact method of locomotion. Where is that third leg located on the
body anyway? I picture them as hobbling about like broken mechanical
toys wondering where God or Pew Mogel has gone wrong in his evolutionary
plans. Kangaroos get around pretty well on two legs, so maybe they
hop a lot. I think JCB was pulling our leg with this one.

Edgar Rice was given to exaggeration at times, and his son followed
suit. Joog is a 130 foot tall giant -- much more than the one met
by Jack
The Giant Killer, who was only eighteen feet high.

Burroughs is fond of writing about giants. Tarzan himself is often
described as a giant man, and the green men of Mars are giants compared
with normal human beings. Tarzan is a giant when he first meets the
Ant Men. I don't think that JCB was too far from his father's way
of thinking when he wrote about Joog.

The entire story is a hoot: Pew Mogel riding around on the head
of Joog in a howdah, truly acting like a Mogul on an elephant: the
2000 rats in parachutes scaring away the birds who carry an army of white
apes. This is wonderful Oz stuff like so much of Burroughs in fact
truly is. JCB didn't have recurring nightmares so far as we know,
but he must have heard some great bedtime stories when he was a boy.

Unlike Odysseus, Carter treats the giant with some respect. Odysseus
finds it necessary to put out the single eye of Polyphemos to escape from
his cave, while in the Carter account it is the eye of Pew Mogel that keeps
on falling out, so he is in effect the man with a single eye. Pew
is slain, while Joog goes free. (For an interesting account of this
theme I refer you to "Origins of the Sacred" by Dudley Young, who believes
that the charges of cannibalism against Polyphemos are trumped up ones
since he was clearly a shepherd who lived on milk before Odysseus came
along.)

Joog doesn't loose his head like Pew Mogul. He just gets to go
back home and wanders around in the dead city of Korvas, perhaps talking
on the loudspeaker in Pew's throne room, wondering where the Wonderful
Wizard has gone.

The giants in myths and fairy tales do usually like to eat people.
The Cyclop in Homer's Odyssey did partake of man-meat, as Pope so aptly
describes the gory feast:

" . . . his bloody hand Snatch'd two, unhappy! of my martial band; And
dash'd like dogs against the stony floor: The pavement swims with brains
and mingled gore. Torn limb from limb, he spreads his horrid feast, And
fierce devours it like a mountain beast: He sucks the marrow, and the blood
he drains, Nor entrails, flesh, nor solid bone remains."

"Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum,I smell the blood of an Englishman,Let him be alive, or let him be dead,I'll grind his bones to make my bread."

I was a little taken aback that Joog did not want to eat anyone, but
I suppose being created from the flesh of 10,000 red men and white apes
does have its effects on normal giant behavior.

I suppose the City of Rats was gruesome enough for a Big Little Book
in 1940. I know that my mother never read it to me. The rats
do act like giants in that they have lots of human bones lying around.
Jack the Giant Killer finds human skulls and bones all over the floor of
Old Blunderbore's castle. King Rat loses his head to Jack Carter's
sword, as does Pew Mogel. This is a particularly good way to finish
off giants, as David
in the 17th
chapter of first Samuel knew when he lopped off Goliath's
head
after he knocked
him out with a stone.

Like a good giant, Joog carried a club, or a tree trunk. No sub-machine
guns for him. Jack
the Giant Killer met the type:

"Though here you lodge with me this night, You shall not see the morning
light; My club shall dash your brains out quite."

There are indeed mutilations galore in giant stories. Pew Mogel
threatens to chop off Dejah Thoris's fingers, and the bandaged heads of
the white apes tells of frightful operations. There is also the matter
of giants dragging off their victims by the hair or hanging them by the
hair in their castles, which occurs time and again in Jack The Giant Killer.
Jack Carter is not treated this way, but he is cruelly grabbed by the hair
and jerked into a cage by one of the white apes, so the theme is given
its fair play.

The caged victim is also a theme in Jack The Giant Killer.
He frees the captives, feeds them with the giant's own fare, and divides
the giant's treasure among them. He has the advantage of an invisibility
cloak that is used to good effect in another Martian tale mentioned below.

Chapter six, verse four,
of Genesis in the Bible records that "There were giants in the earth
in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the
daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty
men which were of old, men of renown."

These "giants" were actually angels. One of them, Shemhazai,
had two monstrous sons named Hiwa and Hiya whom daily ate a thousand camels,
a thousand horses and a thousand oxen. These giants were called The
Fallen Ones who later took to dining on human flesh. When God decided
to wipe them out in Noah's flood, they were so tall that they stood above
the waters, but they starved to death. This story is found in "The
Hebrew Myths: The Book of Genesis" by Robert
Graves and Raphael
Patai.

The authors reckon that the Hebrews were encouraged to form legends
about giants when they found megalithic monuments in Canaan. So too
were formed Greek legends of giants by story-tellers ignorant of ramps,
levers, and other Mycenaean engineering devices when they saw the walls
of Tiryns, Mycenae and other ancient cities. This account seems rather
disingenuous to me since it discounts the psychological meaning giants
hold in the human psyche.

Another Talmudic source reveals that the giant sons of Shemhazai were
named Og and Sihon, which may account for the naming of Joog. This
Og escaped from Noah's flood by riding on the roof of the ark hidden under
a gutter. (C.J. Jung, Psychology
and Alchemy, pages 460-1.) Og was also the King of Bashan
and was later killed by Moses. Jung goes on to explain that Og and
the unicorn are reminiscent of Behemoth and Leviathan -- personifications
of the daemonic forces of nature. (Jung, 464).

" . . . she told him the tale of "Jack the Giant Killer. His response
at the end of the story was: "There aren't any such things as giants, are
there?" Before the mother could give her son the reassuring reply
which was on her tongue -- and which would have destroyed the value of
the story for him -- he continued, "But there are such things as grownups,
and they're like giants." At the ripe old age of five, he understood
the encouraging message of the story: although adults can be experienced
as frightening giants, a little boy with cunning can get the better of
them." (Bettelheim, 27).

Whatever Oedipal conflicts may be involved with JCB's version of the
giant, Joog, they are somewhat mitigated by his final banishment to a dead
city rather than the punishment meted out by Jack
the Giant Killer, which most often involved decapitation and/or dismemberment.

A comparison of Joog and Ghron, the Spider of Ghasta in The Fighting
Man of Mars might be made. Ghron was a giant who looked like
a huge, black hairy ape. He lived in a black castle and was given
to mutilation of his victims which involved torture and grilling.
Like Jack, Hadron moves about with the use of an invisibility cloak, and
he is held in an iron cage. Ghron is not punished for his wickedness,
but Hadron's escape is effected in a hot air balloon filled with the heat
from Ghron's smoking chimney.

Most stories about giants are closely linked with acts of dismemberment
and a form of ritual cannibalism. The stories, at least in those
by Burroughs, may be linked with a kind of ritual dance that leads to a
change in the power structure among a given group of primitive creatures.
Tarzan kills his ape father, Tublat, after a struggle over the dismembered
ape (a Bolgani, which is a gorilla, the giant of the ape family) at the
ring-dance of the Dum-Dum in chapter seven of Tarzan of the Apes.

Here Burroughs makes a bold statement concerning the Dum-Dum.

"From this primitive function has arisen, unquestionably, all the forms
and ceremonials of modern church and state, for through all the countless
ages, back beyond the last, uttermost ramparts of a dawning humanity
our fierce, hairy forebears danced out the rites of the Dum-Dum to the
sound of their earthen drums, beneath the bright light of a tropical moon
in the depth of a mighty jungle which stands unchanged to-day as it stood
on that long forgotten night in the dim, unthinkable vistas of the long
dead past when our first shaggy ancestor swing from a swaying bough and
dropped lightly upon the soft turf of the first meeting place."

From this statement one might believe that Burroughs had read Sigmund
Freud's Totem
and Taboo
and ascribed to his theories of the primal horde. Dudley Young in
his Origins of the Sacred, his search for the origins of
human religion, also follows this line of reasoning, linking a dismemberment
dance to the rise of the alpha-shaman -- the first priests.

So too, Frazer discovers in his The Golden Bough links
between religion the burning of giant figures enclosed in wicker cages
among the Druids during fire-festivals, which have continued to the present
day in the spring and midsummer festivals of Europe. Frazer ascribes
all of these cases as a primitive method of eliminating spells and witchcraft,
which might be transformed in the case of the JCB story into the dark science
of Pew Mogel, who performed unnatural experiments upon men and animals.

Frazer also notes that giants, or tall men in masks to represent demons,
are employed by some primitive peoples in the initiation ceremonies of
boys entering puberty. These boys are ritually killed and eaten,
then return to their people as transformed men of the tribe. Thus,
the fairy tale story of a giant even in the Big Little Book version of
John Carter and the Giant of Mars, one presumably written for children,
provides us with a story of coming of age.